September Starlings (14 page)

I considered the possibilities for a moment. ‘She lost her purse, but she found it again in the sideboard drawer.’ I did not doubt Anne, not for a single moment. If this had been make-believe, some silent signal would have passed between us. ‘What else did you hear them saying?’

Anne screwed up her face, just as she often did when doing battle with difficult words. ‘She’s a … a harlot. She caught your dad through being a harlot. It sounds like a bird with coloured feathers, doesn’t it? Or one of them small monkeys in my zoo book. Mam said that Uncle John should go off somewhere and have a fresh start, ’cos Auntie Liza’s only interested in his money. But Dad said Uncle John is too soft and gentle to leave you.’

My world was threatening to crumble completely. How would I cope if Dad left me? I’d have to live with her, just her and her face creams and stupid tea parties and horrible meals she insisted on inventing from time to time, usually after reading a magazine. A life stretched before me into the darkening sky, a whole era with myself and Mother, cardboard pastry, chewy meat, barley and lentils still hard and nasty. And all that running, all that bring-me-fetch-me-carry-me.
And even more batterings, I guessed. ‘My dad loves me,’ I muttered.

‘Yes, he does. He’s always talking about you to customers in his shop, ’cos Mam’s friends have told her about it. He won’t leave you, Laura, so don’t worry. Mam says she’d like to see him getting away from Auntie Liza, but Dad said it won’t happen. He’s clever, my dad. What he says is usually right.’

I could not help worrying. The worst thing was that I did not for one moment consider my mother. My mind was firmly fixed on my own potential loss – her position was of no interest to me.

For several weeks after the clandestine talk with Anne, I watched my father like a hawk, stared at him across the breakfast table, neglected my homework in the evenings, waited for him to come in. Every minute without him was like an hour, because I feared that he would simply go missing one day.

When he was home on time, we always sat together in the dining room, Dad with his plate of reheated and totally unpalatable food, I with sum books, writing books, maps of the Empire waiting to be coloured in, pink for British, green for all other countries, blue for sea.

‘What’s the matter, Laurie-child?’ he asked me one night. ‘Why are you so down in the mouth?’

I stared blankly at my three-times tables till they seemed to melt and merge into grey squiggles. Apart from anything else, I didn’t know where to begin my list of complaints. I hated the school, was different from most other pupils. Ninety per cent of them were Catholics but, because of my mother’s aversion to papism, I had to sit in a corridor during religion, with a girl called Norma Wallace. Norma Wallace was a Methodist who sported bitten nails and a nasal drip, and who was judged by the nuns to be ‘highly strung’ and therefore a budding genius. They would say to her, ‘Not so fast with the arithmetic, Norma. We don’t want you to be having a brainstorm. You are highly strung and must take things slowly.’ I
wished that I might see her highly strung, preferably from one of the beams in the school hall.

I coloured in a bit of sea, pretended to be busy, didn’t answer Dad’s question immediately. Norma Wallace was expected to reach her ‘full potential’ at the convent of St Mary, so while we were relegated to the corridor, she read books and chewed her fingers while I swung my legs and stared at pictures of miserable saints. If a person had to be so ugly to be a saint, then most people of my acquaintance would never qualify for beatification. All the saints at our school had big noses and turned-down mouths. Norma Wallace had a miserable mouth and she snerched all the time. ‘Snerching’ was an Uncle Freddie word and it certainly did justice to Norma Wallace’s periodic inhalations of mucus. She would probably be a saint and finish up on a corridor wall with a long frock and praying hands, her face frozen in a silent snerch.

Uncle Freddie. He was on my list of miseries too, with Auntie Maisie and Cousin Anne. I loved them, was not allowed to spend time with them. The days of blackberrying and apple-pinching were long gone, and I wanted them back. My mother had forbidden me to set foot next door. My mother’s word was law, because she had appointed herself judge, jury and prison warder.

My mother. While Dad and I sat at the table, she was upstairs, trying frocks on, creaming her hands, her face, shaving all those little gingery hairs off her legs. She was cruel and silly and selfish. My mother was at the top of my catalogue of grievances.

‘Laura?’

I looked up at him. ‘I’m all right,’ I said. If I hadn’t said that, if I’d made a fuss, then he might have blamed the whole sorry mess on me and my sulks. If he was staying because of me, I would need to be good. Dads left bad children, stayed with good ones.

‘I’m going to London next week.’

My heart sank like a stone. I glanced at the floor, as if I expected to see this most vital of organs slipping through
the base of a shoe. He was going. He was leaving me with all that face cream and powder and Norma Wallace and her snerches. He would never come back, because I was not worthy of him, was not good enough for him. Had I been good enough, he would not have wanted to live in London. I would miss him, would be deprived of his quiet, gentle love, even if it did come in small doses and on a part-time basis. ‘Don’t go.’ My voice was strangled with fear. ‘Please don’t leave me, Dad.’

‘I’m not leaving you, Laurie-child. I will never leave you, not while you still need me.’

I swallowed, breathed again. ‘Then why are you going?’ London was one of those far-away places that no-one ever visited except on matters of great importance. It was somewhere to do with King George and a big, noisy clock and some men on the wireless. Like the moon, it was there, but too far removed in time and space to be real and touchable. ‘And how long are you going for?’ It would be awful without him. When he was in the house, he often sat with me, talked, asked questions, told me about his customers and their funny ways. Mother never spoke to me, except to tell me what I was doing wrong. And she used me as a plate-carrier when her cronies came, spoke nicely to me so that everyone would judge her to be a perfect mother. ‘Why do you have to go, Dad?’

He laughed quietly, reached across the table and lifted my face. ‘You are so beautiful,’ he whispered. ‘And so transparent. Laurie-child, you are an open book. You detest that school, I know all about that. But you will thank your mother one day, because those nuns are excellent teachers. As for the situation here …’ He jerked a thumb towards Auntie Maisie’s house. ‘That will come right in time.’

‘He didn’t kiss her,’ I said.

‘I know that.’ His brow furrowed and he said, to himself, ‘The man’s no fool.’ That reassuring smile sat briefly on his face. ‘It will come right. You and Anne will grow, then all decisions can be your own. For now, it’s
best not to rock the boat. Your mother …’ He thought for a few seconds, stroked his moustache. ‘She’s not a happy lady, love. It’s just the way she is – nothing can be done for her. We must try to make no waves.’

‘Why is she unhappy, Dad?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Can you make her happy, make her smile more?’

He coughed, scraped his chair backward by an inch or so. ‘Honesty is my policy, you know that, love. I don’t believe in lying to children, even when they are too young to grasp the facts. Your mother’s unhappiness is a part of her, like hands and feet. It’s just how she’s made.’

‘But why does she make everybody else sad too?’

He sighed. ‘That, too, is a part of herself. She doesn’t know she’s doing it, Laurie. Like breathing. We all breathe, but we don’t think about it, do we?’

The nuns at school often went on about self-control, about having good thoughts, a pleasant attitude towards others. My mother had no self-control. She pretended to be in charge of herself, got upset when she lost her temper and struck me, but even when she wasn’t lashing out, Mother was simmering, hiding how she felt. It came to me then in a flash. In the sixth year of my life, I learned to accept the fact that my mother was a totally unpleasant person. The words to describe her were not in my vocabulary, but I realized that the female who had brought me into the world was on no-one’s side except her own. ‘She says I’m naughty,’ I mumbled.

‘You’re not naughty. You’re healthy and high-spirited.’ His head dropped for a moment. ‘God, I hope she doesn’t beat the nature out of you.’ He looked up, smiled reassuringly. ‘Try not to dislike your own mother, sweetheart.’

‘Everybody hates her.’

‘Laurie—’

‘Well, they do. Me and Anne heard the postman talking about her ages ago. He told the man at number twelve that Mrs McNally is a hoity-toity bitch.’

He coughed. ‘A bitch is a lady dog, child.’

‘Is it?’

‘Yes.’

I considered the implications. ‘I like dogs. Except for that tiny long-haired thing in Greenslade Avenue. It’s a Yorkshire terrier, stupid and snappy. My mother could be one of those, but not a proper lady dog. I’d better tell the postman when I see him that Mother isn’t a bitch unless it’s one of those nasty, yappy Yorkshire things.’

‘I wouldn’t bother if I were you.’ His moustache was twitching. He was trying not to laugh at me. ‘Laurie, you are so old-fashioned. Don’t talk about your mother when you’re outside, dear.’

My mind, after taking one of its mystery tours, found its way back to the main route. ‘Why are you going to London? I’ve never known anybody who’s gone to London.’ Perhaps it was a frightening place where people got lost and never came home again. ‘Do you have to go?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

He chuckled. ‘To see the King.’

‘No!’ My jaw dropped. ‘Without Mother?’ Mother would get annoyed about being left out. And if she went with him, then I, too, would have to go. She liked kings and jewels and stuff, so she’d be annoyed if Dad met the King and she never got the chance.

My lovely father shook with suppressed laughter. We had learned, he and I, to keep our conversations quiet, not to indulge in loud expressions of emotion. Mother seldom spoke to either of us, but we sensed that our closeness to each other would displease her. ‘No, I’m going to see a man about a patent,’ he said. ‘I’ve invented a sort of medicine, a gentle drink that tastes nice and brings a fever down.’

My mother’s empire was born that night, the night when I sat and joked quietly with my father about living in a pa-tent. While I coloured in the British Empire, my father painted a picture of Mother’s territories. His eyes were bright as he told me about his hopes of a small factory
just outside Bolton, about little muslin bags filled with dried herbs, mint, secret ingredients. ‘I found a lot of it in my grandmother’s recipe books,’ he said. ‘Your great-grandmother was a very clever woman, Laurie-child.’

‘When I grow up, I’ll be a chemist too,’ I decided with my usual recklessness. ‘Then I’ll be able to work with you and make the medicines.’

‘McNally’s Cooling Tea,’ he pronounced, his chest puffing out with exaggerated pride. ‘It works, it’s non-addictive, can be sold to an infant.’ He relaxed, stared steadily at me. ‘There’ll be money in this.’

‘Thousands and thousands?’ I asked.

‘Probably. And I shall spend it all on you. You shall have dresses and coats and shiny new shoes. Sweets, toys—’

‘And a dog?’

‘Of course.’

‘A horse?’ I was going a bit far, but it was fun. And Mother wouldn’t like me to have a dog or a horse, so it was really silly, but so exciting. ‘What about Mother?’ I asked in a sober moment.

‘What about me?’ We froze, had not noticed her standing in the doorway. ‘What about me?’ she repeated, her tone harsh and sneering.

My father jerked himself upright, became stiff and steady, ready for her jibes and criticism. ‘I was just explaining to Laurie that I am going to London for a few days.’

‘Her name, in case the birth certificate has escaped your scrutiny, is Laura.’ She smoothed her dress, a beautiful silky affair, its colour just about matching that incredible burnished hair. Mother’s hair was brushed three hundred times each night and was washed twice weekly in a special powder that she mixed with water, something called a beauty shampoo. Liza McNally, all preened and lovely, but with nowhere to go, stepped into the room and placed herself between father and daughter. ‘We’ve been through all this before.’ She sounded unimpressed, even bored. ‘It
will come to nothing, you’ll see. Beechams and Fennings have the market in that sort of thing. There’s no room for another proprietary brand, especially one with a name like McNally. I’m afraid you will be laughed at, John. Still, London is far enough away. No-one here will know about your failure.’

I wanted to leap on her there and then, longed to pull her hair, slap her face. She should not have spoken to Dad like that. As a demonstration of my support, I shuffled nearer to him, would have held his hand except for the look on Mother’s face.

He cleared his throat, took out his watch and studied it for a moment. ‘We shall see about that.’ The half-hunter was pushed back into a pocket of his waistcoat. ‘Yes, we shall just have to await developments.’

The air almost crackled with tension as they stared coldly at each other. A shiver ran the length of my spine, because I felt as if I might reach out and touch their hatred. If I could have trapped the feeling and contained it, it would have been very hot or very cold, certainly poisonous. There was no doubt in my mind that this was my mother’s fault. John McNally was not the sort of man who would hate – or love – easily.

He coughed again, was uneasy in her presence. ‘Yes, we shall just wait and see. Perhaps you will be forced to eat your words, Liza. And I trust that they will not prove as indigestible as this evening’s meal.’ He patted my head, then strode out of the room.

I watched her. The eyes were larger than usual, seemed to be brimming with icy anger. Her head moved about in quick, jerky movements, as if a puppeteer were pulling her strings. The hands, white and softened by creams, were tipped with splashes of scarlet on the long nails. Stains from cigarettes had been removed with emery board, and the fingers were curling in temper. ‘That man,’ she said softly. ‘If he can be called a man.’